[lovich]

>I mean, it is not as if RFK was the darling candidate of HN at one time?

Wasn't my darling candidate. Mostly because I can read research papers and understand that drinking raw milk and avoiding vaccines doesn't make me healthier.

[ButlerianJihad]

> risk without benefit

Indeed. There is no reason to consume raw milk. Pasteurization is not actually the problem.

On the other hand, there is no reason to homogenize milk at all. It is safe and legal to procure "cream top" or non-homogenized milk at many grocery outlets. Cream-top milk is not processed, and in fact there have been detrimental effects linked to the consumption of homogenized milk, which you can avoid by drinking cream-top milk instead.

Homogenization does not make milk safer or healthier to drink. On the contrary, it permits the processors to remove healthful elements and sell them in a more profitable vehicle. Why not simply keep your entire product intact, as it was found in nature?

The "raw milk" craze is a bonkers red herring for everyone. Don't drink raw milk. Don't buy the hype. But you don't need homogenization, either!

[mcbuilder]

Non homogenized, lightly flash pasteurized milk has been my favorite for years. Just tastier, luckily I grew up in a little strange town where it was norm, and I don't have the weird modern health movement baggage to go with it.

[ChoGGi]

Would someone who had never had it consider it tastier, or is it memories of growing up that make it tastier to you?

[ButlerianJihad]

If you can sit down and compare a glass of skim milk to full-fat milk, you’re getting somewhere.

Cream-top milk is not merely full-fat: the cream is unmixed and free floating. You can immediately tell it is different by texture.

Some people separate the cream and reserve it for coffee or something. Or you can agitate it for “manual homogenization”. The difference is texture, really. It may have bothered housewives trying to cook or to pour it. But I love the experience.

[ExoticPearTree]

FWIW raw milk is actually OK. Drank it “directly” from the cows, never got sick from it.

*directly = cow milked into a cup.

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

"The objective of this review is to provide an integrated historical account of the complex, often convoluted events impacting milk hygiene and its resultant effect on infant mortality from 1875 to 1925. Heat pasteurization of cow's milk is necessary for rendering this important nutrient source safe for humans-particularly infants. Developed by Louis Pasteur in 1864, pasteurization evolved from the commercially important parboiling of wine and beer when the Industrial Revolution was effecting rapid societal change in Western societies. In European and American societies of the early and mid-19th century, infant mortality rates were 30- to 60-fold higher than the current rates of five or six deaths per 1,000 live births per year."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30234385/

Not every pre-pasteurization child died, but far more died than post-pasteurization.

Raw milk is just a bad idea at anything beyond incredibly tiny tightly controlled scale. Sure, you got lucky. It's still not a good way to feed a society.

[lompad]

Raw milk _can_ be kind of okay under very specific circumstances. (But knowing the state american farms tend to be in regarding hygiene and controls, it's a ridiculous gamble.)

1) extremely closely controlled cow health

2) minimal storage time

3) minimized chances of cross contamination/reasonably clean cows <- that's the big one

4) healthy immune system to minimize infection chances

If even one of those isn't there, it's basically sickness in a cup. Why take a risk if there's no benefit?

In germany, there's the concept of "Vorzugsmilch", which is raw milk from specifically controlled farms with super tight regulations with regular and intense controls and testing of milk, e.g. monthly testing of every individual cow's milk.

But even then, it's an - albeit small - risk without benefit, with the exception of raw-milk cheese, which can't be made in any other way. I just don't get it, practically none of the claims of the raw-milk-gurus could be proven under controlled circumstances. Why needlessly take risks?

[mrwh]

I tend to think the risk is the point. It's an in-group marker, getting very sick every so often for no good reason shows commitment. Which of course makes it doubly pointless as a suggestion to the general public, but the fact that it's a bad idea doesn't mean that for the in-group it's a bad idea. (I mean, it _is_ a bad idea, you understand though.)

[ExoticPearTree]

In all truthness, it was in a village and I was under 6 or 7. It was the way things worked. And no one monitored the cows specifically: they would graze all day and then returned in the evening and be milked by hand.

[duzer65657]

This is exactly how the RFK shit gets support: one person says "hey, I did it and I'm fine!" somehow get extrapolated to "it's good for _Everyone_"

[ndsipa_pomu]

I played Russian Roulette a couple of times and I'm fine

[lostlogin]

There were a few times when I didn’t look as I crossed the road. It was fine.

[UncleMeat]

Cows are covered in their own shit, including their udders.

"I drank raw milk and didn't get sick" is not actually the same as "drinking raw milk is safe."

[manarth]

the plural of anecdote is not data.

[inigyou]

Yes, it is, actually. Especially in social sciences.